


Shifting Parameters

by deepandlovelydark



Series: Second Chances [35]
Category: MacGyver (TV 1985)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Humor, queer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 18:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17709308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Most people would be happy they had a date.(Most people aren't secret agents.)(And right now, Becky's kinda hoping for that midnight end-of-the-world call, cos a mission would be so much more straightforward...)





	Shifting Parameters

**Author's Note:**

> Abandoned.

"I've never really understood," Becky says, looking around the flat. "Why you thought you needed this place."

It's not bad- certainly, it's a step above a battered old trailer. Second-story above a bookshop-cafe, it smells vaguely of coffee and a tiny hint of fishiness from the bay. Decor is straight out of a designer catalogue, not the homely jumble back at the ranch house, but it does feel lived in. 

Jack shrugs at her, and shakes up a bottle of whipped cream with alarming enthusiasm. "Because sometimes I don't feel like driving all the way home, late at night. Because a love nest's a handy thing to have, if you have the money. One of these days I might get back to the range and find the feds put the place under siege, there's lots of good reasons to have a bolt hole."

"A bolt hole, sure. That's not the same as the...other thing." 

He places the final touches on her ice cream sundae- two dollops of cream and a strawberry- and starts prepping his own. "Most partners, even in a three-way, aren't necessarily gonna be too thrilled about seeing you staggering in at four in the morning with a stray hook-up. They know I'm doing it, that doesn't mean they want me to shove the details at them. Trust me, it's better all around like this."

"Guess I don't have that problem, anyhow." Negotiating just one- whatever it is she has with Ashton right now, is going to be hard enough. Multiple people involved sounds unfathomably ridiculous, she thinks. "I don't- I haven't-"

"Haven't what?"

Becky winces. "Are you gonna make me spell it out?"

It takes him twice as long as her uncle or even Murdoc would have, but then, it is Jack Dalton she's dealing with. "Christ, not even with that Minnesota kid- what was his name-"

"Luke. No. Not that he didn't ask." She dips her spoon into the sundae, and watches vanilla swirl drip off it in bemusement. Everything's a little overheated in this climate, even with the air conditioner clunking away (obviously Jack knows somebody who could fix that- oh, well). 

"I hope he wasn't pressuring you."

"No. Just asking, and I said no. It didn't seem right somehow. It's never seemed right at all, honestly- can I tell you something ridiculous, Jack?"

"You let me do the same thing often enough, fair's fair." He's finished slicing up a brownie into long blocks, and starts cementing them back together with butterscotch drip. 

"I used to like hearing Unc tell me stories about Sir Galahad. You know, the innocent adventurer, always fighting for the right and the truth. And very celibate, I thought that'd suit me just fine. It pretty much has suited me just fine up to now. There's all this back and forth, people staring at other people's eyelashes and not noticing that the plans to the treasury have gone missing or whatever...and here I was in the middle of all that, saying to myself 'thanks but no thanks'."

"I'll tell her to go away if you like," Jack immediately volunteers. "I'll even think up my own ridiculous excuse that you clearly couldn't have had anything to do with."

"That's not the point. I have to be working with her on a mission in Chechnya next week anyway." That's part of the problem. They're a good team- they work well together, their strengths complement each others' weaknesses, and they can guess what the other one is thinking with a fair degree of certainty, a necessity in this profession. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. I'm not anything-"

"Sure you are. Even if you don't know what, you must be something."

"Something I don't know what it is, then," Becky says, taking a belated bite of ice cream. "Ashton's as heterosexual as they come- I mean, she likes the whole flirtation part of the business, she's very good at it. I was the one to bring it up, actually."

"...okay, I am surprised," Jack admits. (His sundae is nearing completion, with a layer of pecans and pistachios; or she hopes it's nearing completion, the size it is now.) "Tell you the truth, your uncle's labouring under the impression that you were propositioned, against your own wishes, and you're trying to figure out how to let Ashton down gently."

"I don't like telling him about work incidents. He doesn't know the details." 

Details: one interrogation room, one dose of truth serum, two captives. She can remember a sneer, the flickering of lights, the heady, bitter taste of the vile stuff in her mouth. Unpleasant, but infinitely less embarrassing than what had happened next. 

"The point was, I didn't crack under pressure," Becky says eventually. "Or at least, I thought that was the point at the time. But I'm not completely sure we're going to be able to keep working together the same way any longer."

(A truth serum: and in response to every question, each exasperated attempt to elicit her hard-won knowledge, she'd smiled back and said "I love you" to Ashton.)

("I counted," Ashton had said afterwards. "You said it eighty-two times.")

"Will they even let you keep working together, if you two became serious?"

"Of course not! We're not like HIT, there's _standards_. Colleagues dating each other is a serious breach of professional ethics, and it wouldn't be tolerated with either of our respective governments."

"So it's not entirely a question of who wants who," Jack says. (His sundae, pushed to one side, appears to be completely forgotten.) "It's a question of what the two of you want more. Each other, or what you do as a unit."

"Right."

"So how badly do you want her?"

Becky groans at him. "If I knew, d'you think I'd be asking you?"

 


End file.
